NCERT Class 12 Heritage Crafts Tradition Of India Mahatma Gandhi and Self Sufficiency

A cause is often greater than the man. Certainly the spinning wheel is greater than myself; with it, in my opinion, is mixed up the well-being of the whole mass of Indian humanity.
– M. K. GANDHI

THE first article of Gandhiji’s faith, as he himself has said, was non-violence. Therefore he could not accept a society that produced violence. True civilisation, he said, was to be found where industries had not entered and cast their influence. India, before it felt the impact of industries through the British rule, represented this true civilisation.
Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas about self-sufficiency and handicrafts were directly related to his views on industries and industrial society. Gandhiji believed that industrial societies were based on an endless production of commodities. This produced greed and resulted in competition. The end result of this was violence and war.
What I object to is the craze for machinery as such. The craze is for what they call labour-saving machinery. Men go on ‘saving labour’, till thousands are without work and thrown on the streets to die of starvation. I want to save time and labour, not for a fraction of mankind, but for all; I want the concentration of wealth, not in the hands of a few, but in the hands of all.

  – M. K. GANDHI
 Young India, 13 November 1924

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